Jay Jacobs' departure as Auburn AD is long overdue

One of the most eagerly anticipated days in the recent history of Auburn Athletics finally came to pass Friday. The long reign of Jay Jacobs as athletics director has been given an expiration date.

Based on the public and private feelings of so many people who care about the university, as well as many neutral observers, it's long overdue.

Jacobs' released a statement couching the decision as his own, saying, "I have prayerfully decided the time has come for me to step aside" no later than June 1 of next year, "sooner if my successor is in place."

Much sooner is the plan preferred by insiders, but in truth, Jacobs' didn't arrive at this decision voluntarily.

The misguided hires that looked good on the front end but eventually blew up in his face and the internal scandals gone public across multiple sports became too much for the AD with the second-longest tenure in the SEC to weather any longer.

A little more than a month ago, a handful of power brokers decided enough is enough and communicated that message to new President Steven Leath.

It took them long enough.

How will Jacobs the athletics director be remembered? As the smiling, backslapping, down-home, all-about-the-family former football walk-on who wore his faith on his sleeve? Or as a scheming, backstabbing, keep-it-down-home, all-about-himself manipulator whose public professions of faith masked his ability to throw people under the bus to consolidate his own power?

There's a third option that may come closest to the truth, that Jacobs morphed from one extreme toward the other, from a well-meaning puppet installed in that position because he could be controlled to a mean-spirited wannabe puppet master who became too enamored of his own perceived power.

A few weeks ago, according to someone familiar with the details, Jacobs showed up at the Birmingham office of a major Auburn donor unannounced. His message: I'm not going anywhere, brother.

This despite the mountain of evidence that it was past time for him to step down for the good of the school, that a small group of decision-makers already had reached that conclusion and was trying to work out the details.

It was more evidence that, as multiple sources described, at some point during his long tenure Jacobs changed and not for the better. Instead of being all about how to protect, defend and promote Auburn, his mission and his charge to his subordinates shifted. It became all about how to promote, protect and defend Jay Jacobs.

The environment inside the athletics department had grown toxic. Current employees were telling former colleagues they didn't know whom to trust anymore and the supposed core values of "always tell the truth" and "if you see something, say something" didn't always apply.

One key example of how the public portrait of the AD didn't match the private persona was the relationship between Jacobs and the last football coach he hired, Gus Malzahn. Perceived as allies, their relationship had deteriorated over time.

Jacobs made his displeasure with Malzahn known at a senior staff meeting after Auburn's dispiriting 2016 loss to Georgia. The AD ranted about the coaching staff's incompetence in that game and, in his eyes, its inability to grasp the importance of the Georgia rivalry.

People in the room wondered. Why is he telling us? Shouldn't he be talking to the head coach? Those were good questions with a simple answer. The athletics director and the head coach were no longer speaking to each other much about anything.

One relatively new employee, who'd worked at other major programs, discovered that working for Auburn Athletics was like stepping into a time machine and setting the destination for the 1980s. The place resembled a mom-and-pop operation that never changed its old-fashioned way of doing things despite watching annual revenues climb north of $100 million.

It was hard to get a specific answer to a specific question in a timely fashion. There were people in the department whose specific function was hard for anyone to identify. No one in the department, from the AD on down, seemed interested in asking the new employee how things worked at other schools where he'd been employed.

Then came the bigger question that troubled some new and old employees alike. Were they supposed to be loyal to Auburn or to Jacobs?

That's no longer a dilemma.

Auburn's decision-makers now have arrived at a crossroads. Are they going to hire another familiar name who won't change the fundamental way Auburn Athletics operates? Or are they going to use the same wisdom Alabama did when it chose Greg Byrne to follow Bill Battle - hire a proven professional administrator even if he doesn't have family ties?

By making it official that it's moving on from Jacobs, Auburn has resolved one major issue. It has many more left to address.